Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback
Reply #562 – 2014-11-24 14:08:17
Besides the satisfaction of "having the studio quality", what would be the point of buying higher formats ? If it is higher than how the music was recorded/produced, then I have no use for it. If higher is what is recorded and mixed, then I like to get my hands no those bits as I don't trust anyone to do the right things in the chain to bring it down to something lower. (snipped list of higher prices for higher resolution) Assuming you really want to listen to a particular recording of some music: If someone records at 1MHz and charges you $100 per track, will you pay to get your hands on this? If someone records at 10MHz and charges you $1000 per track, will you pay to get your hands on this? If someone records at 1GHz and charges you $1,000,000 per track, will you pay to get your hands on this? I'm just wondering what your limit is. Your entire argument is that you have no limit ("If higher is what is recorded and mixed, then I like to get my hands on those bits"). You keep implying folks here are unreasonable for setting a limit. I have no limit and yes, people here are illogical to have one. There is some confusion in what you are assuming about me though. So let me tell you another story . I am working for Sony and my boss and I are practically living on airplanes going on 10 hour flights to and from Tokyo from SF Bay Area. This is early 1990s without all the technology we have to entertain ourselves (you should have seen me with my portable CD player and stack of CDs). On one of the flights, United gives us this survey to fill out about our interest in supersonic jets that would cut the time to 3 hours or some such thing. I start to fill it out and I get to your type of question: would pay 2X, 3X, 10X or something like that. Before I had a chance to think about it, my boss says, "check the 10X." I say but I don't think I will want to pay that much just to save 6 hours. He said the smartest thing: "let's motivate them to build it; once there we can decide if it is worth it or not. If they don't build it, we will never have a choice!" From now on I always check the most expensive box in such surveys . So back to your question, I don't care what the retail price is. I want to encourage a stream of releases that are before the final mastering of the CD where both the 16/44.1 conversion and loudness compression occur. Yes, not all of them are free of the latter but more and more they are. Answering your question then, my motivation ha nothing to do with the sampling rate. I don't care if the pre-CD master is 48 Khz. I take the better sounding one! Take Adele Live at Albert Hall. I think the Blu-ray version is only 48 Khz sampling but it is world's better than the CD. The latter has surely put through the grinder as it is not listenable compared to the Blu-ray version. This is what getting the upstream bits enables: a shot a better mastering. And a good shot at that. When I bought the album in question, the L2 Nordic Sampler, I opted for 96 Khz. There was 192 at higher price still but it didn't matter to me. I was happy to see that supersonic version but chose one notch lower. In this case I knew there was no loudness compression applied to the 96 Khz so I opted for that. But you know what? I regret not getting the 192 Khz now just for the extra $4. I might go back and get that one just to compare even though it would set me back another $28 (really crappy of them to re-charge you the full amount for another sampling). For this discussion to make sense, I need to know whether you really mean what you say, or whether you do have a limit, but it's different from ours. Let me address the "ours" part. I am going to make an assumption that neither one of us has any interest in half a million dollar supercar. Personally even if I had the money, I wouldn't buy it. I have no use for it in any form or fashion. I am assuming there are many people like me. Should we start a campaign to outlaw development and sales of these cars? Yes I know, you are going to say it goes faster so there is real value. But put that aside for a moment as I just said, knowing that I have no interest in half a million dollar in a car. You are in the same boat with me. Should we go and get them to not be legal to sell? That is what you are saying in your post. That how much something is priced for a different audience should be cause for us to get together here, and call each other names if someone disagrees. I founded a company called Madrona Digital. Our "poor" customers have net worths many multiples of me. And the higher ones can afford to buy small countries . No, we don't sell them any high-end audio gear. That is a stupid business for anyone to try to get into (AJ will figure this out one day). But we will install automated lighting and shades that combined would cost $200,000! I don't wake up in the morning having any negative feelings about that or the fact that high-end lighting systems exist. In my own house the lighting system cost about $25,000. Someone with a $2 light switch just blew a gasket . I used to feel the same way but then I started to think of all the ways it would make our life more enjoyable and put it in. Just this week my wife and I decided that if someone rings the doorbell on the Intercom, it would be nice to have the front lights come on for 10 minutes but only if it is after dark. 20 minutes later that is how it worked. Is the above of value to mass majority of people? No. Just like a 4 bedroom apartment. Where I think the vocal few go wrong is that they pick battles when no one is asking them. If someone tries to convince me to buy a supercar, the will get strong, strong arguments. I want a large comfortable car because I haul a ton of stuff and drive far distances. It is fast enough for me and handles well enough. Everything about a supercar would be a step back for me at higher cost. So you are going to hear these arguments. But folks getting together in another forum trying to decide which supercar to buy? More power to them. They are not trying to convince me to buy so why business or logic do I have for shedding a tear. This is what is wrong with the argument you are making. What business of ours is there to set a limit on price or specs? I don't buy LPs but people make them and folks buy them. Good for them all. It creates jobs and improves the economy . Ask me to buy an LP and I tell you that the convenience of digital is so important to me that I don't even want to hear it. I am writing this long post because this is the ultimate problem and the cause of all of these written battles. People think they have some duty to fight these battles. They even fight the battle when no one is here to represent the other side! The only person we have who is promoting "snake oil" is AJ with his $2,300 cables. I have said no such thing. If I ask them why they say they want to save some individual from wasting their money. Fine. But at what cost are you doing that? Xnor is determined to get there at the expense of looking totally unprofessional and going after someone who is interested in discussing the topic using double blind tests and science/research of audio. That would be like two republican leaders tearing each other up with the goal of signing up more democrats! Here is the reality of it: the above is not the reason Krab, Any, AJ, mzil, xnor, etc. post what they post. Nope. We gather in these forums because it feels good to be known as an authority. Many people pick what I call "good enough" as their platform. It seems safe. We can immediately wear the cloth of "science" and say nothing is better than another, listening test says this and that, some textbook that we have read says something else and we are golden. We become the hallway monitor in school. Walk around the forum and stomp on any kid we can find. Losing that power is a big deal. This is why xnor posts and posts. And before him Krab, Arny, AJ, mzil, etc. Mzil for pete's sake used to sell audio gear. The very same gear he is here to say should be illegal to buy! Give me a break. I am not here to join a crowd for that reason. And certainly won't join the camp and be requested to paper over faults in our arguments. I want 100% transparency. Let me repeat: I want 100% transparency. If there is something wrong with our argument, we better offer it before the other camp does. We raved and raved about Meyer and Moran proving that there is no value to high resolution audio. All the while we heard the arguments that said, "wait a second, these guys didn't know which end was up; they didn't even test to see if their content was high resolution!" No, carried their report under our arm and used it as our bible to stomp on the other camp. Well, that era is over. Far more careful test has been run which is the topic of this thread. And what do you know? It has a different outcome! What to do now? What? Oh, let's attack the messenger. Let's say that Amir is a cheater and see if we can create some smoke. Let's keep saying that an authority like James Johnston, my former audio architect and AES Fellow, would never agree with any of this. Well, this is another page from his presentation: